Finished moving last year's logs!

We've finally finished moving all of last year's logs away from the felling area!

By moving them now, they're a lot lighter than when we felled them (they've seasoned, as we split or striped them straight after felling), and we've also avoided doing damage to the tracks, as they're dry. In fact, I'm not sure we'd even have made it up some of the hills if they'd been muddy!

The trailer has worked very well for moving logs, as it's light enough to turn round and push up the hill rather than having to try and reverse it, and it takes our 2m logs no problem.

My parents were visiting last week, and we had a lot of help from my Dad with the logs:

Tracy and I moved some other wood too, such as another big chunk of this Sycamore to use to make a table in the camp area (my brother and I moved one earlier too):

There were also some logs to make into stools as well (see the timelapse video of one being made):

We also had some longer logs that we wanted to move for use in future projects, and I found we could easily drag them along with the car, using a ratchet strap to fasten them to the tow bar:

They're all back at the camp now, ready for building stuff...

Finally, we've also been busy taking logs home ready for the winter, and the firewood store is full! These are all 2-year old logs, so will be nice and dry.

Mike

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Driving the Land Rover through the woods

The previous post included pictures of us extracting logs in the Land Rover - this time I have a video of it! I've given a bit of a commentary as we drive along, if you can hear me over the engine. Thanks to Tracy for filming!



Mike

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Extracting firewood

We've finished the work levelling the tracks (or rides, if you want the forestry term) in the wood, and now we can start moving out the wood we cut last winter:


With logs sticking out the back, we have about two cubic metres of space in the land rover, though some of that is air between the logs, so we're probably looking at 7-800kg of wood in the back of it!

We've been able to drive right the way to the top of the hill, where we were coppicing last winter:


From there it's pretty easy to get down the hill back into the woods...

and onto the section we've levelled out along the edge of Sweep Wood:

and from there back into Chestnut Coppice:

We're also able to drive up the hill between Sweep Wood and Chestnut Coppice now, which we'd never tried before:

We intend to only drive on the tracks when they're dry, so that they don't get rutted. This should work OK, as we can fell in the winter and stack the wood near where it falls, then extract it the following summer.

There's some changes in the wood at this time of year, such as fungi coming up:


Cob nuts growing on the trees we planted in November:

and our first chestnuts on the trees we coppiced in 2007/8:

It was pretty windy today, and bizarrely an Ash tree fell over in Sweep Wood in between two trips past it moving logs:

It was one that had bracket fungi growing from the base, so I suspect that had weakened it. It'll be interesting to see if it recovers - if not, there are plenty of other Ash trees in that part.

Mike

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Sussex and Surrey Coppice Group

We've been members of the Sussex and Surrey Coppice Group for a while, but today was the first time we made it to one of their meetings.

There's two specific posts I've written already on tool repair and a mobile sawmill, the rest of the event follow below.

The event was held in a woodland about an hour from us, and many members were demonstrating their crafts.
More follows in the rest of the post, including a charcoal kiln and horse team...

The various demonstrations going on included making a mini coracle:
Charcoal burning (I found out quite a lot about this from several people there, as it's something I'd like to try):
and a horse team, moving logs for the mobile sawmill to process. The horses were very well trained, walking backwards, forwards and stopping on verbal commands.
There were numerous other things going on, such as basket weaving (with Alan Sage), chair making and more. One of the events was an auction of tools and various bits of woodland equipment:
I was pleased to come away with two billhooks, one of them an Elwell. Plenty of spare now for when visitors are in the wood!

Mike

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